one word, two thoughts, one at a time..mostly

Escape velocity, II…or Escape velocity, aye-aye you might say

We are hunkered down here in Colorado too, against the wind rather than the snow. My town has recently recorded record-breaking 101 mph wind gusts. No escape from the wind here, nothing to protect us from blowing debris or falling branches. Best to stay inside. Maybe we need to move to Mexico close to the equator if we want to escape. The earth itself can give us a push. Did you know satellites are launched at the equator to use the spin of the earth to help them take flight? Anything on the surface of the Earth at the equator is already moving at 1670 kilometers per hour.

You tell me that even Lewis and Clark were trapped by the storms, and all they had seen and mapped might have been lost had it gotten any worse. Didn’t they draw all kinds of animals as well as mapping the mountain and rivers? Species of birds and animals the East Coast had never seen before. And on the request of Jefferson – practically a king. I think it’s a good thing to be reminded we’re not kings, even they were just as much trapped by the weather as a simple animal, even a bird for example, maybe a Snow Goose. (Still no follow-up news on the 10,000 dead geese at the SuperFund site.) Even if we were kings, (I prefer that we talk about queens, sick of kings with their narcissism and hate. Besides queens often had more power than kings, they wear the pants -except Henry the 8th with his quest for a male heir- and who wants to talk about old men with power?) even if we were kings, we can’t control the great raging force of wind and weather. But we can pay close attention, so not to be trapped in a caustic lake.

In the way that one click leads to another, I started searching for escape velocity and ended with a term in physics called “flutter,” or more correctly “aeroelastic flutter.” It is apparently a term meaning the beginning of the absolute collapse of everything. See the Tacoma Narrows bridge video of 1940: https://vimeo.com/13323591

Not only is the bridge in the 1940 video acting as if it were a simple string in the wind, rippling like a wave in water, but there is an act of human bravery involved. Rather, a brave man in a hat. In the video, (in 1940 it was actually a 16mm camera) a man goes back on the swaying bridge, to retrieve a cocker spaniel left in an abandoned car. The terrified dog bites him and cannot be rescued. I wish he had been able to get the dog. I suppose that only happens in Hollywood. I’d like to be able to do that…to have enough faith or stupidity to think that I wouldn’t be dragged to my demise. I also need to start wearing hats. The video is hypnotizing, as we know that the ultimate destruction is eminent.

When I was a girl, I helped my older brothers to build epoxy bridges for a college class they all took, a class they all dreaded in turn: Fluid dynamics. It was very math intensive, and the final was a project constructing a bridge. On their way to becoming chemical engineers, each in turn tried to create the bridge that would hold the most weight. It was built out of epoxy and toothpicks. I would dip the toothpick in glue and hand it to my brother, and he would strategically place it according to a design he had to come up with. So, maybe that’s why a woman writer likes physics. Maybe we quickly connected physics and art. I think you helped build epoxy bridges too. If not then, now.

“Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying. “ — Langston Hughes

I quote Langston Hughes this MLK day. My thought is that perhaps writing is an escape into the mind, an escape from some of the horrors or boredom of the real world. He says in the quote it is “Beauty for some provides escape”, so perhaps writing is the study of Beauty. I like that he mentioned the gorgeous buttocks of the ape. If he lived now, would he have said the “ape exquisitely dying, and the eyeing of the Autumn sunset?” In writing from the human spirit, there is no black or white. As I look out the window, beauty is a study of wind.

“I took up writing to escape the drudgery of that every day cubicle kind of war.” –Walter Mosley

So it all comes down to the Clash. Should I stay or should I go? See how much we learned in high school? If I go there will be trouble, if I stay it will be double. When playing poker, I’ve been told, the correct answer is always: It depends.

Sometimes it seems the flutter happens so quickly there isn’t enough time for an escape plan. (See: dog in car.) I think we’ve both seen women in abusive relationships who need a plan to get out. That was my first thought when you mentioned escape velocity, something to be overcome. Not just the gravity of the earth, but the gravity of a situation. Nothing is ever simple, and leaving is also about surviving….about escaping a violent man she has deeply hurt or offended –by the act of leaving itself….it can be tricky. Sometimes the flutter will follow her. Escape is about money, timing, surviving on one’s own. It’s about admitting the mistake and facing the unknown. It’s about putting your own survival above others, and sometimes that affects the children, children who you love more than yourself, even your dog. I get mad when people don’t understand how abused women can stay with an abusive man.

I mean, it’s easy to see that Life (with a capital “L”) has a way of throwing you into entanglements. I was never with an abuser, but I was with a guy who wanted to tangle me into his failing bridge, asking me to watch him drink himself to death. Even now, after his death, I still feel that I did not escape that devastation. But few of us escape unscathed. I guess the lucky ones just escape with a dog bite. Part of me loves that escape of the soul, that drunken charisma, the carefree-doesn’t -matter-what-happens life. Maybe when you’re trapped, its better to live in the moment. You know, the gypsy soul. It’s way too early to drink, so I turn to Baudelaire.

It is the hour to be drunken! to escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish. —Charles Baudelaire

What is happening in the news is alarming, and I think we are all sort of watching to see if and in what direction things are beginning to sway. Even tall buildings allow for a little sway, and we have a constitution to protect us. Signs and all indications have us worried that things are going wrong. At least for me, the swaying began the minute that a President was caught on tape talking about grabbing women. That sway made me pretty nauseous. I’m hoping it’s not as bad as it seems, and in four more short years, we’ll find a different bridge to travel, but as they say, we can cross that when we come to it. Hopefully it won’t be in the middle of aero-elastic flutter.